moment of peace.” I pointed to the door. “You can go now.”
He slid down into the booth as I leaned back. Colby had sat in that same spot a moment before, but Erik filled the space, consuming everything around him like a black hole. I crossed my hands over my chest, steeling myself against his presence.
He reached across the table and gripped my beer, taking a long drag before leveling me with his gaze.
“Quite a day you’ve had,” he mocked.
I looked away, not interested in his teasing, but when he spoke up again, there was no hint of amusement in his tone.
“When I used to have bad days in the gym, I took it out on my coaches as well.”
His honesty shocked me, but I kept my gaze on the TV screen, pretending like I cared what was happening on the baseball field.
“I had a bad temper and a short fuse. No one was harder on me than myself, and I know you’re the exact same way.”
I glanced back at him with an arched brow. “I ate shit today—on skills I can usually do in my sleep.”
He nodded, swallowed another sip of beer, and waited for me to continue. I didn’t, not right away. I let him finish off nearly half my beer as I worked up the courage to talk to him.
“It’s starting to get to me,” I said, hating the softness in my voice. “We leave for Rio in two weeks.”
“Two weeks is plenty of time.”
I snorted. “Right.”
“I meant what I said earlier. You’re not trusting your body. You’re letting the competition shake your confidence and you need to relax. Remember you’re a world champion. The Olympics aren’t that different than Worlds.”
I shook my head. “They’re very different and you know it.”
He sat back and drank his beer, letting me stew in silence.
“No,” he argued, finally. “I don’t know. This will be my first games too. I quit competing a month before the Olympics and never came back to the sport.”
I arched a brow, surprised he was willing to offer up details about his life after the day we’d had.
“Were you injured?” I asked, bringing up the rumor I’d heard.
He turned away, narrowing his eyes on the row of alcohol behind the bar. It was a while before he answered. “It was a culmination of things.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck before meeting my eyes again. “The reasons aren’t important.”
I could sense a darkness there, a secret he wasn’t quite willing to offer up yet. I wanted to lean forward and take his hand, promise he was safe with me, but he wasn’t. We weren’t each other’s confidants. Far from it.
“That’s fine if you don’t want to share the reasons, but I am curious.”
I stared at his lips cast in the hazy glow of the bar. “Curious about what?”
“If you regret it.”
He leaned close so I had no choice but to focus on him, inhale his beauty from across the table. “Never. Not once. The fire that burns in you—that need to compete and win—it never burned inside me. I never had the passion you have.”
“I’m scared I’m going to choke,” I admitted, playing with one of the coasters on the table, tearing it in two and then in four. “June, Lexi, and Molly have done this before. They know what to expect, but I feel like I’m the wildcard. I could go down to Rio and win gold, but I could just as easily go up in flames.”
“It’s not luck, Brie,” he pointed out. “It’s skill, and you’ve got it.”
I laughed. “Do I? It didn’t feel like it today.”
He dropped the empty pint glass back on the table and pushed up off out of the booth. “You need to forget about today. It’s gone. Over. Tomorrow you’ll get back in the gym and your body will know what to do. Give yourself a break.”
I slid out of the booth after him; I knew there was no point in resisting if he was ready to go. He dropped a few bills on the table to cover the beer and Colby’s ego, then ushered me toward the door with his hand wrapped tight around my elbow. I inhaled a deep breath, feeling the stress of the day start to melt away. His body was right behind mine, steady like a rock as he led me out to the parking lot.
“Thanks for that,” I said as he held the passenger door open to his truck.